ITAM & The Asset Lifecycle

Info Engineering Asset Management (ITAM) suffers from a notion issue. On one hand, employing an ITAM application promises a significant operational and funds expense price savings of up to 30% of your application price range. On the other hand, a the latest study of CIOs and CFOs reviews that 84% never see any of that price tag personal savings.

What gives?

I have been doing work the ITAM and SAM (software asset management – a element of ITAM solutions working precisely with software package licenses, support agreements, and audits) for over 20 many years. I have observed asset administration applications and procedures go erroneous for a myriad of good reasons. But the easiest and swiftest issue to deal with is the bad implementation and enforcement of an asset lifecycle.

Almost every configuration asset administration databases (CMDB) or asset managed information repository (Asset MDR) follows the same 5 asset lifecycles phases delivered by the ISO/IEC 19970-1:2017 greatest business enterprise practices:

  1. Acquisition/Enhancement – assets in scope are acquired (or made) in a managed method and appropriately recorded
  2. Release/Deployment – assure that releases of IT property in scope are prepared and executed in a way that supports ITAM demands
  3. Procedure – assure that operational processing utilizing IT assets in scope is executed in a way that supports ITAM specifications
  4. (Re)deployment* – guarantees that the deployment and redeployment of IT assets in scope is executed in a way that supports ITAM prerequisites
  5. Retirement – take out IT property in scope from their recent use, with subsequent repurposing, recycling, and disposal in which proper, in accordance with company plan and assembly all history-keeping needs

*Note – the ISO/IEC lumps Deployment and Redeployment processes underneath the exact title, to ITAM practitioners’ detriment. You are going to see why even more down…

The overriding theme of these definitions is that they are procedurally driven and subjective to the requires of the organizations’ overriding needs. But that also indicates CMDBs and Asset MDRs have to keep their asset lifecycle flags subjective to their distinct customer’s procedural requires. And if the customer’s group doesn’t thoroughly define what these phases are, then the ITAM crew cannot continue to keep up with all the deployments and adjustments, and the CMDB/Asset MDR reporting gets to be untrustworthy, and that explains why so several CIOs and CFOs report such lower viewpoints of the whole affair.

The trick to rebuilding asset lifecycle definitions is to make sure they are objective, distinctive and primarily based on measurable knowledge attributes. By goal, I imply not open up to interpretation by whoever is placing the asset lifecycle flag (as opposed to subjective definitions, made use of to describe art for the beholder, rigid peaks in a merengue, or pornography to a supreme court docket justice). By special, I mean that an asset are unable to be in two phases simultaneously. And by measurable knowledge characteristics, I indicate information collected by the CMDB/Asset MDR, either gathered by automatic mechanisms or by other teams’ activities.

With this in head, permit us apply new definitions to these 5 asset lifecycle phases but improve the definitions so that they are goal, distinctive, and primarily based on measurable details characteristics:

  1. Acquisition/Improvement – money, or the guarantee of cash, has been paid for the possession or proper to use the asset but has not however been received nor deployed into the computing surroundings

Knowledge characteristics: Obtain Purchase Number or Bill Number 

  1. Release/Deployment – Asset has been bodily received and accounted for, and is now being manufactured all set for use in the computing surroundings, but not nevertheless deployed into the computing natural environment.

Knowledge characteristics: Buy Buy Amount or Bill Number, plus Bill of Lading details and visible inventory

  1. Operation – Asset is active in the computing environment 

Info attributes: All the attributes for Period #1 & #2, moreover: existing IP Tackle, community scanning tools, use logs, command, and manage instrument information, and so on.

  1. (Re)deployment* – Asset has been removed from the computing ecosystem briefly, with the intent it will be applied again 

Details attributes: Same as Period #1 & #2, but all knowledge characteristics from Period #3 would be out of day

  1. Retirement – Asset has been eradicated from the computing ecosystem forever and is no for a longer period the assets or issue of the business. 

Details characteristics: All from Phases #1-4, additionally a Chain of Custody report (i.e., disposal certification, donation receipt, police report, etc.)

*Note – Sharp-eyed visitors will recognize Launch/Deployment and (Re)deployment are not specifically goal and exceptional from one another. And you are suitable. I guarantee I will demonstrate this if you keep with me!

Thanks to these definitions, an intrepid ITAM manager can glimpse at the info attributes coming into their CMDB/Asset MDR and know which asset has moved their place in the asset lifecycle. Your ITAM group can search at the sum whole of gadgets in your ecosystem, sift out the asset documents with lifecycle configurations that match the expected details attributes and emphasis on looking into the kinds that never. Perhaps a hassle ticket or modify request was not correctly created just before the Assistance Desk changed a Computer? Or only part of a shipment was acquired mainly because of supply chain challenges? Was a notebook dropped or stolen, and was Cyber Security notified? And if that piece of components has been pulled off the wire, can the software package assigned to it be used somewhere else?

With the ITAM workforce actively screening the veracity of the details attributes defining the asset lifecycle, two things then come about. 1st, the number of asset data the ITAM workforce necessary to analysis and update manually is a superior metric for both of those the wellness of services guidance processes and the general precision of the data contained inside the CMDB/Asset MDR. Second, the a lot more correct and responsive reporting from the CMDB/Asset MDR will make improvements to the general trustworthiness of the CMDB/Asset MDR by the CFOs and CIOs.

Now, let us address the asterisk, our Roger Maris of ITAM, the (Re)Deployment section. The ISO/IEC 19770-1:2017 conventional brings together the first deployment and recovery and redeployment of assets into a one period. And this is to the ITAM industry’s detriment. Asset restoration and redeployment is a single of the 3 procedures Gartner identifies as crucial to achieving that 30% cost price savings (pointed out previously in this short article). Any asset currently owned and redeployed helps prevent a new asset from getting purchased a straight-line price tag discounts for each the components and software budgets. ITAM teams can much more obviously demonstrate these financial savings by tracking and reporting precisely how lots of assets pass by means of this “Redeployment” period.

And that we do not describe why so number of of the C-Suite Management assert to see any gain from our attempts.